Happy Anniversary, #ygk

I use twitter a lot. I’ve found that it’s a great way to communicate with constituents from Ottawa, and it’s really helpful for sparking important discussions with constituents. That said, sometimes twitter can be a bit overwhelming: I follow over 2500 people, and almost 5000 follow me.

Three years ago, I attended a twitter meetup in Kingston, and I asked if there was a standard hashtag for Kingston. You can read more about that meeting here:

A hashtag is a simple way to search for tweets that share a common topic, by linking them with a #. I wanted to find out what people are saying on twitter about Kingston, or from Kingston. Just searching “Kingston” was too broad: I just tried seaching #Kingston on twitter, and I found tweets about a college in Jamaica, a Toronto bus route, and a community newspaper in the UK. We discussed possible hashtags at the twitter meetup, eventually settling on #ygk, the airport code for Kingston. It was only a few characters (because we’re limited to 140 on twitter!), unique to twitter, and particular to our Kingston. The first twenty tweets from recent search for #ygk all dealt with local issues.

It’s been exciting to watch the #ygk hashtag grow over the last three years. Thanks to everyone for making Kingston and the Islands a great place to live and tweet!